Welcome to the one and only Phat Daily Column. The ratings are in, and boy do they tell a story! Was WCW's poorly booked Pay Per View going to boost their ratings? Was the WWF's product, without interviews, going to destroy WCW? Let's find out, as we'll analyze the ratings to see what went on Monday Night. On to the PDC.

Ratings Analysis

NITRO

First Hour: 2.9Second Hour: 2.1Composite: 2.5

RAW is WAR

First Hour: 4.6Second Hour: 5.3Composite: 4.95

-HEAD to HEAD-

WWF Weekend Shows

Livewire: 1.1Superstars: 1.2Heat: 2.1

Good lord. The WWF's ratings went down, while WCW's increased from the week's before. I wouldn't blame the Pay Per View on this either, because fans everywhere are just angry for losing a hard earned $30 this past Sunday. However, many came back to watch Nitro, in both the first hour and second. First hour jumped 0.2 points, while the second jumped 0.3 points.

However, the WWF, after proclaiming they had the best TNN rating last week, just gave us one of their worst TNN showings yet! You know what scares me? WWF bookers or whatever will look at this and blame the "wrestling". Thanks to this, we'll probably see more boring interviews to put wrestling fans to sleep, while the sports entertainment fans of 1998 will get off on it.

With RAW, how can you start it off with a match involving Chyna??? She isn't quite the skilled wrestler to start off the show with a bang, as she didn't. Eddie Guerrero had to carry her to a decent match, but not a hot opener.

The other parts of the first hour was sort of close, but I question why they had Crash fighting Test for the first hour of RAW. I mean, if you aren't going to save it for the Jakked/Heat tour, then at least put it in the second hour. Also the other night, Steve Austin isn't quite the draw he used to be.....isn't that right WWF? The end of the second hour got smoked in Austin standards.

Oddly enough, the announcement of Flair as commissioner attracted fans, and they decided to watch Buff and Luger wrestle each other too. I doubt that though, because there was a commercial break in between each segment, so I'm thinking that named of Flair as CEO of WCW put the ratings through the roof. Otherwise, this second hour would have matched last week's numbers. Gee, looks like Flair equals ratings, so why not use him more? If you can at least attract oldschool fans to watch the Nature Boy one more time, then the boost in the ratings would be better than trying to have Crash TV everyweek.

I was looking in the Wrestling Information Archive for ratings history, and I saw that 1999's numbers blow 2000s out of the water, especially for tonight's shows. Now you could blame the lower ratings on a few things, like a bad WCW this past year, wrestling trend going down, and the WWF's laziness without competition. I believe it's a mix of all three, but something needs to be done to spark the wrestling world. Maybe the sale of WCW to the WWF could be it?

Owen Hart Suit Settled

The Wrongful Death suit that Martha Hart, Owen Hart's widowed wife, filed against the WWF has been settled. The lawsuit that would reportedly crash the WWF stock, has been settled during very muddy times for the Hart family.

But my point about this lawsuit is that because of it, no Owen Hart tribute tapes could be released by the WWF. Now that it's probably settled, why not make a tape with nothing but Owen matches? It would be sort of like Colosseum Home Video used to do with wrestlers, making a 2 Hour tape of nothing but the best matches of a wrestler. You could put Owen's defeat on Bret from Wrestlemania 10, his King of the Ring victory in 1994, his CLEAN win over Rocky Maivia for the Intercontinental title in 1997, and so forth. And it wouldn't be about the WWF making a profit off the videos, although I'd bet it would be a hot seller, but it would be something for Owen Hart fans, of all ages, to enjoy.

Why not do it?? If you want the WWF to do something like this, please tell them at WWFfans@wwf.com that you want an Owen Hart tribute of some kind to be released.

(Note: The Hart family has currently been told by their lawyers to be quiet about this settlement, so possibly after this column goes out, something could change.

@That's it for today. I'll be back to discuss WCW. Oh, by the way, I'll be discussing the WWF in the Time Machine column for Saturday, so if there is a timeframe or incident you'd like for me to discuss, please let me know! Check out Kicking Ass and Taking Names Later at the Phat Pharm!